


Up the Stairs

by dotfic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-24
Updated: 2006-09-24
Packaged: 2017-10-12 12:57:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/125061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something's not right. This is her kitchen. But these are not her children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Up the Stairs

**Author's Note:**

> set during "Home." Slight John/Mary.
> 
> Disclaimer: None of them belong to me. They are the property of Eric "I have a plan, no really" Kripke and the CW.
> 
> Thank you to offbalance for the beta read. Beta readers are love.
> 
> A/N: Written for the 2006 spn_gleeweek Request Fest: #17 _I'd like a tag on story to Home, set in Mary's perspective. You can start from when Sammy first sees her all flamey or you can start it whenever. I just want it from her perspective_ requested by dawnydiesel.

She walks the empty living room, wondering where all of her furniture went.

"John?"

Wait.

John's not there anymore.

She frowns.

Someone else is in the room with her, a young man wearing a blue wool vest over a high-collared white shirt. A dark circle stains his chest.

"What are you doing in my house?"

Now she sees it isn't just one stain, but many merging together, jagged holes where his flesh shows raw. His lips move rapidly, angrily, but she can't hear the words. He's shouting, his eyes bright with rage. They're the last thing to stay intact as his whole body crumples like ash and disappears.

* * *

There's a little boy with an adorable round face sitting at the kitchen table, drawing on paper with crayons.

"Dean, do you want your--"

That's not Dean.

A little girl sits down opposite the boy, reaching for a cookie on the plate, and then the blonde woman walks in.

"You guys want lunch?"

"Can I have tuna?"

"Of course, sweetie." The blonde woman plants a kiss on top of the girl's head.

Something's not right. This is her kitchen. But these are not her children.

A movement catches her eye, like the blinking of the leader on a film reel, and it reminds her--

 _salty popcorn, warm summer night, the creak of the back seat, movie playing on the screen (but they aren't watching) and John's mouth, tongue, hands (oh his hands...)_

It hits her somewhere below her ribcage, the feeling of loss so powerful that if she still needed to breathe, she wouldn't be able to.

She's dead. It shouldn't hurt this much. John's gone.

The young man with the bleeding chest appears, standing in the doorway, watching the family and though he keeps flickering in and out, she can make out his expression clearly enough.

It's curled with malevolence, and something like hunger. For what, she's not sure.

"Leave them alone," she says.

But the ghost doesn't even look her way, just vanishes like he did before.

* * *

It's easiest to think in the nursery closet. The space hums, like electricity, bright and throbbing.

What happened?

The hall lights were flickering...

No, before that. She kissed Sammy goodnight, and John picked up Dean.

After that.

Someone in the nursery that didn't belong there.

Sammy!

No, not Sammy. But there's a little girl in the bed outside the closet, and she's the one in danger now.

The young man in old clothes stares down at the sleeping child, calculating.

"Leave her alone," she says, low, warningly, and reaches out to touch him. But he moves past her like she's not even there, although he glances at her, gloating, taunting her helplessness.

He puts out his hand and a picture frame slides down the wall, the glass breaking.

The little girl sits up with a gasp and the young man vanishes.

"It's okay. It's just a picture frame. Shhhh." She kneels beside the bed, aching to gather the trembling girl in her arms.

"Mommy!" the little girl yells.

"I'm right here," Mary says, before the door opens and the blonde woman rushes in.

"It's okay baby, what is it, did you have a nightmare?"

Right.

Not her child.

Not her house any longer.

* * *

The young man enters the girl's room again, but Mary's figured out a few things.

She reaches out and gathers the brightness in the closet. It's like touching an electric fence, a pain sharp and memorable that leaves her shaking.

Heat crawls up her legs, over her arms, makes her hair blow back as if in a gale.

Triumph rushes through her when she discovers she can move aside the chair, push open the closet doors.

The young man looks up in horror as she approaches. Yes, he's afraid of fire.

Good.

"Get away from her," she says.

He vanishes.

The little girl screams, and Mary realizes it's not the young man's ghost she's screaming at, but her.

 

* * *

It's impossible.

She senses it long before the front door opens. Something clicks into place and she feels complete, no longer fragmented.

They don't see her. Her boys look right through her, they can't see her, but she doesn't care because they're standing right _there_. They're _there_.

This is her house, and Sam and Dean have come home.

Sam's taller than Dean, which makes her laugh because she can imagine what Dean thinks about that. She looks for the baby she knew in Sam's features, and it's not hard to find. He carries himself with gentle confidence, a boyish maturity. The young mother of the house trusts him because he gives a little bit of himself away to the good people he meets and doesn't view it as a loss. He needs a haircut, and there's too much sadness in him, neither of which she can fix.

And Dean--it hurts beyond measure to look at him. He's built like John, moves like John, with something else in his attitude and his face that neither of them gave to him. He's almost stranger to her, except when his face softens almost imperceptibly when he sees the children. She notes the two tiny scars along his jaw, four on the back of his hand, two at his temple, and one at the base of his neck that just peeks out beneath the frayed collar of his brown jacket. She's certain there are more, larger ones, out of sight under his clothes. For the first time Mary doubts that John kept the promise he whispered at her gravestone.

She anxiously turns to Sam, hunting for his scars. There's a tiny one along his left cheekbone, back near his ear, and one along his right temple, barely visible through the hair, but that's all she can find.

It's as if Dean wears the scars so Sam doesn't need to.

Mary tears her gaze away from her sons, to the faded figure standing by the door to the kitchen. His eyes are fixed on Sam and Dean with hatred piled upon fear, and she wonders how he knows to be frightened of them.

"Touch them and you'll really learn what pain means," she says coldly.

* * *

He seems to hate even more after that.

"Don't you dare do this!" she orders him.

But the young man's ghost laughs at her and before she can think what to do, the plumber screams in agony.

Mary averts her eyes, hating him for what he's doing to her house, to this woman and her children.

* * *

She tries again, because, oh God, the little boy. He's locked in the refrigerator! She tries to undo the latch, but can't. That's when she finally understands: she has no corporeal form.

She goes to the closet but it doesn't work. There's no electric hum, no fire, no power.

She returns to the refrigerator.

"It's going to be okay." It seems odd that there's enough space in there for her to stand upright, particularly since the boy has to be curled up to fit. The boy's sobs stop hitching just for a moment, as if he can hear her. "It's going to be all right, your Mommy is going to find you."

She can hear the mother, frantic and calling.

Mary gets an idea.

"Kick over the milk carton. Can you do that? Kick it over, don't be afraid. Kick it over."

The little boy does. The milk drips down to form a beacon, the door opens, the mother gathers her boy safe in her arms.

The tears she can barely feel sliding down her own face are both relief and the mourning of something she can never have back.

* * *

It's going to take some getting used to, being dead.

Wait, no.

She's been dead for a while now. Twenty-two years, she realizes, although she only remembers it as days.

What's going to take getting used to is knowing she's dead, accepting it.

She has no physical form and hasn't figured out how to move objects the way the century-and-a-half-old spirit has. Perhaps his fury gave him access to power she can't have (and doesn't want to touch).

But she's tempted.

If she could figure out how to do it, maybe she would, if it meant being able to save her boys. Even if it turned her evil.

She knows, even as she steps in front of Dean, that the knives will go right through her, but she tries to protect him anyway. Dean snatches up the table, blocking the knives.

He can't hear or sense it when her fingers lightly brush the top of his head as she whispers, "Sam, upstairs."

Mary's up there ahead of him, in a blink, just by wishing it. The lamp cord is twisted around her baby boy's neck but her fingers can't get purchase. He's going to suffocate in front of her. Maybe he'll haunt the house with her.

She doesn't want Sam back that way. Dean!

The closet, have to get to the closet in the nursery, maybe she can touch the flames again and she can--

But Dean's there, bending over Sammy. He can't loosen the lamp cord either so he kicks a whole in the wall, throwing in the last packet of herbs. There's a white flash.

The last thing she sees is Dean flinching up against the wall and Sammy gasping for breath, alive and safe, before they diminish rapidly from her sight and something slams her into blackness.

* * *

Has she died again?

Where...

Oh no. Dear God in Heaven, no.

He's more powerful than ever now, she feels it all around her. The anger fills the house, fills the air, suffocating.

He intends to kill her children.

Like hell he will.

Whatever happened, it's made her stronger, too. She touches the lines, lets the fire sweep over her, welcoming the heat this time.

It's hers to command.

Sam has the little boy in his arms. As he runs into the bedroom to gather up the little girl, he looks at her with fear. She tries to call out to him but can make no sound other than the crackling of flames, and she despairs that this is all she is now, a creature made of fire.

* * *

The other spirit has Sam, it's hurting him.

Dean's shouting, breaking through the door, running to Sam. But the spirit could kill them both, no matter how brave Dean is or how good he is at whatever it is John has taught him to do.

Her oldest son's fear would be visible only to his blood as he steps between his brother and what she knows is her own terrifying appearance, raising his gun like it's part of his own arm. She gets it, John kept kept at least half of his promise. Maybe even all of it. She's ashamed for even doubting.

Sam recognizes her first.

Mary pulls the fire back, tucks it away like the hood of a jacket, and she becomes tenuously herself.

Dean's hand shakes as he lowers the gun he's pointing at her. There's the little boy she remembers...no, not the little boy. It's the man he's grown into that emerges from beneath a brittle shell.

"Mom?"

She says Dean's name, like it's a gift she's giving him again, and it's all she can say, because this cloak of herself she wears is so hard to hold in place. The fire is always on the edges of her and she can't let it take her back yet. She has more to say, to both of them, but she can't.

Just a few moments longer.

"I'm sorry," she tells Sam, and when he asks _for what_ she doesn't have time to explain to him that it's for leaving him. For not being strong enough to protect him the way she wanted to.

It's time. The spirit of the young man who died violently over a century ago is everywhere, unseen, spread throughout the house. He's found a way to escape his shape just when she's figured out how to hold onto her own. But it's time to let it go.

She's not helpless any longer.

Mary unleashes the fire.

 

~END


End file.
